The use of gloves in sports is well known in the art. The type of glove used in a sport depends on the particular sport whether it is football, baseball, golf, tennis, soccer, hockey, martial arts, wrestling, cycling or other sports. The design and construction of sports gloves for each sport is focused mainly on protecting the athlete's hands from injury when catching or throwing a ball, swinging a racquet, lifting weights, throwing punches etc. A majority of sports gloves also focus on enhancing the grip of the glove by applying sticky material such as rubber or other synthetic material to the catching surface of the glove to improve tackiness and aid in the gripping function whether it is for catching a ball or holding a bat, a racquet, or a golf club. Some grip enhancing sport gloves in the prior art have suction cups attached to the catching surface of the glove as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,675,392 (Albert); U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,593 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,745,403 (Sajovic).
More important than the tackiness and stickiness of the catching surface of a sports glove is the ability of the glove to provide grip strength which has a significant impact on an athlete's performance. In general, gloves that increase grip strength enhance athletic performance. None of the artificially generated gripping surfaces of sports gloves in the prior art assist with increasing the grip strength of the athlete which is critical to the athletes performance.
Sports gloves in the prior art with other grip enhancing features include the use of springs sewn into the glove overlying each of the user's fingers to impose a selective gripping force as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,675,914 (Mitchell) or a glove incorporating an elastic strap through which various tension forces can be applied for imposing an auxiliary gripping force on the individual fingers of the user, the force being adjustable while wearing the glove as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,796,306 (Mitchell). By selectively applying gripping force to each finger of the user of the glove, these prior art gloves do not necessarily increase the overall grip strength of the athlete which is required to improve athletic performance.
When each finger of a traditional or prior art glove works independent of the other fingers, the gripping strength of individual fingers is very weak. When a normal glove is worn in any sport, the fingers work independently and therefore, when catching a ball, tackling, holding a bat or engaging the glove in other activity that requires gripping strength, the player's grip is significantly weaker because they are not utilizing their full gripping strength potential because they often try to hold a bat, catch a ball or make a tackle with only one finger and the grip strength of one finger is very small.
When an object is held simultaneously with two fingers, the two fingers work as one, resulting in the generation of greater grip strength. The increase in grip strength is double or significantly more powerful than just trying to grip with one finger. A traditional glove does not enhance grip strength because all five fingers of the hand are separated and therefore the ability to have two fingers work as one when holding an object is substantially limited.
The present invention, the “Vpower” glove overcomes the deficiency in the prior art for sports gloves that increase grip strength. The increase in grip strength for the sports glove of the present invention is generated by the use of two fingers of the hand working as one when using the glove. In order for the sports glove of the present invention to facilitate the use of two fingers working as one to enhance grip strength, two sets of double fingers are created by sewing the index finger and middle finger of the glove closely together and the ring finger and the pinkie finger closely together such that each pair of fingers acts like one finger. When wearing the resulting glove, the user is forced to use the connected fingers as one forger, thus increasing the gripping strength and full use of the maximum possible gripping power.
Prior art conceiving the concomitant use of two or more fingers together include, U.S. Pat. No. 7,431,657 (Whitehead, II et al.) which describes a grip-enhanced sports glove for bowling that uses an elastomeric, control/grip-enhancing material that circumferences the finger tips of at least one finger providing a similar shape and feel to the commonly used cylindrical insert grips. US Pat. Appl. Pub. No. 2009/0025120 (Vestling) describes a tri-finger multi sport glove covering the index finger, middle finger, thumb and a portion of the wrist of a hand.
More particularly, prior art that describes the concept of stitching together glove fingers include, U.S. Pat. No. 5,628,068 (DeLong) and US Pat. Appl. No. 2008/0282445 (Taliento et al.). U.S. Pat. No. 5,628,068 to DeLong is a two fingered baseball glove with the index and the middle finger joined by a web sewn into the center line of both fingers in a three-panel stitch and primarily serves to train the fingers to remain in the proper pitching position. US Pat. Appl. Pub. No. 2008/0282445 to Taliento et al. provides inserts between the fingers of the glove, webbing the fingers together and spacing them apart and alternatively one or more inserts provided at least between two of the fingers spacing the fingers apart without webbing to improve the grip of the user and absorption of shock. Neither of these patents envisions sewing two fingers of a glove together to act as one finger to increase grip strength as the present invention does.